Me...and my new laptop

Everyone knows that I'm pretty thrifty when it comes to buying things.  Actually, it's a freaking miracle if I get anything for myself at all.  But, with work heating up, and me needing to be sitting in front of the machine all the time with school and so forth, I just stood up and hollered, "Damn it, it's high time I got myself a laptop."

And with Ace in tow, on Friday I did.

Just to put all of my iLemmings nerves to rest, nope, still no iAnything.  You keep trying to infringe, but I resist! I refuse to put myself in debt just to keep up with your trendy butts.  Oh yeah...what's that, your iPhone 4S who lets you talk to yourself without looking nuts? Awww, poor Siri, her time is up...she's being replaced with a quad-core, which is...what was that? YES, exactly what I've got in my little laptop.

Go!  To the cliff with you, hand over your first born to pay homage to Steve of the Hereafter! Um, entry-level iPads are actually just a hair less expensive than the actual LAPTOP I can do everything I do on my home computer, with the convenience of having it with me at school and it weighs the same as a Mac Mini but has three times the RAM.  Homogeneous iCulture.  While you sell out to own a piece of fruit with a bite already taken out of it, I'll skip down the road, laptop paid for in cash money.  No bill left over.  But I can't believe people actually take out FINANCING to pay for an iAnything.  Just goes to show how far people are still going to keep up with their neighbors.  Still shoving themselves in a financial hole while I run on winged shoes hollering,

"YOU'LL NEVER GET ME!!!!   MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

But, now I must leaving the iLemmings to their plug-and-play bliss, saving up every last dime as they salivate and step on each other, to get rid of their perfectly fine, babbling brook of a phone who has all of the sense of humor a piece of styrofoam for a new iPhone 5.  If they want to be broke, that's their business and they can morgage themselves to their eyeballs for their iWorld, it's none of my business.  What I did get though is reminds to my favorite black-clad ciphers from The Book of D'ni.  The true example of what it is to live without pride...my beautiful relyimah.  The Unseen.

At only around 3 pounds, my new baby is light as a feather, perfect for lugging around campus for the beginning of...

MY SENIOR YEAR! Woohooo!

So, now on top of work, I've officially taken on a crafting project.  My new laptop. 

 

Yes Barry, she's an HP.  An M6 series to be exact.  Hey, shush!  I got a good deal and I shan't have any iLemmings besmirching my new little darling.  She integrates perfectly with my huge desktop machine, except guess what, I've got an easier time working with my Wacom tablet because I'm not bound and shackled to my desk!

I will admit though, I was a bit disappointed at first when I found out it only came in black.  But, hey...after praying for one for a while now, I'll take what fits within my price range and desired specifications.

Not to sound ungrateful, but it wasn't until I got her home, unwrapped her and really took a look at her appearance that a grand idea hit me like a ton of bricks.  As the Book of D'ni said, "Clad only in black, they appeared to be more like ciphers than men," so since she's skinny as a rail, and clad all in black, shiny in some places and so forth, I started searching all over the Internet for a Myst-themed laptop...a skin of some type.   You know what I found?

Nothing.

Oh yeah...Dance with me...going to make my groovy laptop into something my Myst family will love!

What is incredibly ironic about all of this is that, well, the Myst franchise was born on the MacOS. Yep, a PC girl who digs on a game that was born as an iLemming.  Who knew.  LOL!

But, it doesn't matter to me.  Myst is Myst and just like good people, it wouldn't matter if it was blue, green, aquamarine, an apple or an orange, it's good stuff, so I love it just the same.

Now how on earth do you start a process like this?  Well, easy really. First things first, is you have to get what you're working on to look right, so you start by customizing your desktop.

1. Start over at  mystjourney.com.  Over there you'll find Myst desktop wallpaper aplenty, if you're like me, you grab them all and save them all into one folder.
   
2. Then you  right-click the desktop and hit personalize.
   

   

   We're concerned with the four little options at the bottom.

3. Then just click on the desktop background and click on "Slideshow".  Navigate your way to your folder with all of those great images created by the wonderful fella over at MystJourney.com and select the folder. Don't forget to choose how you want it to fit on the screen and how often you want the picture to change.  In my case I can't ever get enough Myst so I set mine to five minutes.
   
4. Then go to the next button "Window Color."  For me, I picked a very nice, reminiscent of Channelwood rusty brown.  Everywhere in Myst you'll find a rusty hue, so that's what I went with.
   
5. For the sounds, I'm not done yet.  I've got my game soundtracks that are just waiting for me and Audacity to sit down and make a few cool sounds.  I definitely want to see if I can make a bahro shriek my error noise.  LOL!  OR how about the logon sound being Yeesha's voice saying "Shorah" in Uru!  Omg!  That's hot, I GOTTA do it.
   
6. Then for the screen saver, hey, you have to be inventive and a problem solver if you're a Myst fan.  I went over to Cnet.com and picked up Sim Aquarium 3.  No, there's no Whark in the aquarium. Sorry to say, but there is a setting to create what looks like rain hitting the water, making these groovy ripples that go over the screen when you move your mouse, kind of like in Eder Kemo near the book room to go back to Gira.
   
   Like this:
   
                    
   
7. The only things left?  The desktop icons and the external skin.  Those are works in progress.  I'm trying to figure out what I want to use as the D'ni equivalent of the recycle bin, my computer, and other icons I want to change or make uniquely Myst.

But, on top of all of that good stuff, I'm going to give it the final shove to make it feel like falling into the Star Fissure.  Here, let me give you a clue...

Custom D'ni numbers on the top line and the 10-key keypad.  That's right!  Envy me. Combined with D'ni glyphs spelling "relyimah" on the cover skin with a few extra flourishes?  Oh yeah, now that's MY laptop.

Wanna see how the desktop looks right now?

And yep, those are earthquake occurrences from the US Geological Service.  I'm such an earthworm!  Atrus would be proud.